GOVERNING THE CLIMATE

We live in turbulent times. Some eight billion of us live in an increasingly connected world. The pace of technology-enabled change is accelerating. This can be both exhilarating, as new opportunities and experiences become accessible, and intimidating, as familiar places and relationships are transformed beyond recognition. This accelerating pace of […]

An Essential Alliance: Climate Change and the Law – UCL

The fate of the climate and the future of the law are intimately entangled. The rule of law is a crucial precondition for the success of climate policy. Climate policy failure is not inevitable but it is imminent. Avoiding failure means an end to the burning of fossil fuels by […]

DUBLIN CLIMATE DIALOGUES

Session 3: The implications of an accelerated transition to #netzero: This session will explore the implications of carbon pricing, the creation of a Carbon Club of Nations to accelerate transition, and the impact on global trade and investment in a #netzero era. Is a Carbon Club of Nations – a […]

What Are the Priorities for Environmental Law Following Brexit – PIEL UK 2021

It is fifty years since I joined a local group of Friends of the Earth. I started as an environmentalist. What I am going to do is step back a bit and look at both some of the failures and the tensions in a wider context of the development of […]

A carbon club?

Now that it is widely recognised that climate change does indeed pose an existential threat to civilisation, there is an accelerating search for new ideas about how best to respond. Not all of them are good. Many of these ideas are well-intentioned searches for ways to accelerate the agonisingly slow […]

Climate change threatens food, energy and water security – LBC

Climate Policy failure is what David Attenborough was talking about. If we fail to keep the increase in temperature below 2 degrees centigrade, then what we are threatening is food, energy and water security, and if you can’t maintain food, energy and water security then you can’t maintain internal stability, […]

What have the Extinction Rebellion protests achieved? – LBC – 20 APR 19

. This is a transcript of an interview I did for LBC with Matt Frei, discussing what has been achieved by the Extinction Rebellion protests. ‘ These protests have already achieved something, which is to change the public conversation. They have transformed it. The protests have made a real difference […]

REMARKS ON CLIMATE AND SECURITY AT THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL – WASHINGTON DC – JUNE 17TH 2015

          This is the address I gave at the Atlantic Council event Climate Security: The Next ‘Battle Ground’? on June 17, 2015 in Washington DC.                     Security professionals often distinguish between human security issues and national security issues. Of course […]

THE FRAGILE CITY AND THE RISK NEXUS

                          This is a new short book I have written with leading urbanist Charles Landry. It brings together for the first time two disconnected narratives. The first is about the future of the cities in which half the […]